Selected notes

For more information on all the materials cited see the further reading page.

16. See Hicks-Judd Company, San Francisco Block Books (San Francisco: Hicks-Judd Company ), for 1901 and 1909. Earlier block books do not include the Outside Lands. De Young’s extensive landholdings within San Francisco are difficult to determine; while lists of property were compiled by the city following the 1906 disaster (the McEnerney Index ), De Young’s file is missing from the Recorder’s Office.

18. Arthur McEwen’s Letter 1, no. 3 (3 March 1894 ): 2.

20. Some enemies said that Mike had had his brother committed to get him out of the way. Gus De Young died at the asylum in 1906 . Michael went to Stockton to collect the remains, but the Chronicle ran no death notice . See “Gustavus De Young Dead,” San Francisco Call,13 October 1906.

24. The museum didn’t officially acquire the name M.H. De Young Memorial Museum until 1924.

25. In this vein, mayors have called both Market Street and Van Ness Avenue the Champs Elysees of the West since at least the turn of the century, a prime example of wishful thinking. See also Kate Atkinson, “What Being ‘The Paris of America’ Really Means,” San Francisco Call, 5 June 1910, for its allusion to vice.

29. Professor Edward Alsworth Ross wrote in 1910, “Thirty years ago, advertising yielded less than half of the earnings of the daily newspapers . Today it yields at least two-thirds. In the larger dailies, the receipts from advertisers are several times the receipts from the readers, in some cases constituting ninety percent of the total revenues. As the newspaper expands to eight, twelve, and sixteen pages, while the price sinks to three cents, two cents, one cent, the time comes when the advertisers support the paper. The readers are there to read, not to provide funds. “ Ross, “Suppression of Important News,” 304.

30. Spreckels was the estranged maverick son of the sugar king Claus Spreckels. He and Phelan were partners in the Real Property Investment Corporation, which bought much of the land from the Fair estate. “Spreckels-Phelan-Magee Syndicate Incorporated, “ San Francisco Chronicle, 5 October 1904.

37. Older and his wife narrowly escaped a bombing, after which the editor was kidnapped, then rescued from a train headed for Los Angeles. Prosecuting attorney Francis Heney was nearly fatally shot in the courtroom, and key witnesses and suspects after vanishing were found floating in the bay.

44. Arthur McEwen’s Letter, 1, no. 2 (24 February 1894): 1. De Young was, for twenty-three years, director of Associated Press. Upton Sinclair cited a 1909 study in La Follette ‘s Magazine which showed how the fifteen directors of the Associated Press, all publishers of major newspapers and all politically conservative to ultraconservative, filtered the news. According to the article’s author, they were all “huge commercial ventures, connected by advertising and in other ways with banks, trust companies, railway and city utility companies, department stores, and manufacturing enterprises. They reflect the system which supports them” (emphasis added). “In other ways” often included marriage, as demonstrated by the De Young family. Sinclair, Brass Check, 275.

46. The kidnapping of Patty Hearst provided an exception, focusing international attention on that family.

47. “[The assistant managing editor] is versed in a most essential knowledge of what may be printed in the paper, and what it would be dangerous for the public to know. Under his care comes the immense problem of general policy, the direction of opinion in the city in the paths most favorable to his master’s fame and fortune.” Anderson, “Blue Pencil,” 192.

50. Vanderbilt, Farewell to Fifth Avenue, 242.

53. The Chronicle columnist Herb Caen reiterated the theme when he wrote of the 1996 opera and symphony openings, “It was Homecoming Week last week for San Francisco’s bon ton, the most incestuous provincials you’d ever care to meet, not that they’re especially interested in meeting you.”

54. A Southern family, the Parrotts had made their money in plantations and the slave trade, expanded it in Mexico, and invested wisely in San Francisco real estate during the gold rush. “Cholly Francisco,” “Engagement of Miss De Young Is Announced,” San Francisco Examiner, 1 January 1914.

58. Her son Nion’s 7 percent gave the two of them one-third control of the Chronicle companies.

60. “McEvoy Drops Suit against the Chronicle,” San Francisco Chronicle, 26 August 1995.

61. Sinclair, Brass Check, 400.